These are supposed to be answered from your own experience and ideas, not "examples" from other people. Granted, this one is a bit more generic, but how can someone else answer "Describe an occasion when you recognised an opportunity to improve something" for you when this is supposed to be an example of what you have done???

I am assigned a task and expected to manually do it over and over again. I say this is bullsh*t and automate it and let the computer do the work for me.

I did this to three people at my ex wife's company. She complained that they had an entire department of people who did nothing but collate the excel spreadsheets from all the various subcontractors into one big master sheet with every job code and worker and material specified and added together.

I replaced the entire department by working in VBA for 4 hours. Monday morning, she put all the sheets in the same directory, pressed the button, and then emailed her results to the big boss. On Friday, he compared her results to the human workers and ended up firing the lot of them.

I replaced the entire department by working in VBA for 4 hours. Monday morning, she put all the sheets in the same directory, pressed the button, and then emailed her results to the big boss. On Friday, he compared her results to the human workers and ended up firing the lot of them.

It's amazing what people still do manually nowadays. Not sure if they are just ignorant there's a faster way or if they think it's great having the gravy train come by to do something that simple. It's also funny how people are so resistive to these type of changes. Then again if that was my sole job, then I guess I'd be concerned. I guess as a Sys Admin, I have more work than I know what to do with so if someone comes along with a script (or I write the script) and I can either automate the task or use the script to simplify the task to someone lower on the food chain, I'm all for it.

I guess it's small town thinking also around here. They'd like to be the guy who stamps the paper, grabs the next sheet and stamps it, and proceeds to do that all day. I'm the type of guy who'll setup the machine to stamp the paper for me and then tell the guy giving me the paper to put it in the machine instead of giving it to me Problem solved

I replaced 2 network technicians with a web page that allowed users to configure their own load balancing equipment. We ended up using them elsewhere, but still. Computers replace jobs!

It's pretty much evolve or die. Computers will slowly replace almost every single job out there. I mean think when the Google self driving cars become legal in all 50 states. You're going to turn the whole trucking industry on its head as well as any company that provides transportation such as cabs. That's only 1 example of the many things that we're going to see taken over by computers. I honestly think we've reached a tipping point where computers and automation are going to replace jobs faster than they can be created and the pace this is happening is speeding up rapidly.

Trucking is a major industry that's severely limited by the people they're willing to pay. You make pennies on the mile these days, and the trucks are manually rate limited, so the drivers end up cheating the system. Breaking the limiters, not riding on all their tires, riding the brakes, etc. It's even illegal for trucks to drive certain ways around here, certain towns forbid trucks from braking specific ways.

Trucking is a major industry that's severely limited by the people they're willing to pay. You make pennies on the mile these days, and the trucks are manually rate limited, so the drivers end up cheating the system. Breaking the limiters, not riding on all their tires, riding the brakes, etc. It's even illegal for trucks to drive certain ways around here, certain towns forbid trucks from braking specific ways.

I know in the smaller companies that kind of stuff most likely goes on. Also them keeping 2 log books (one for the cops the other to get paid) and other stuff like that to make more money. I worked for a larger trucking company for 3 years and I can tell you they watched these things like a hawk. There's Qualcomm (and other systems now) that track the driver's every move, including GPS position as well as stuff such as hard braking and such. These systems have been in place since the early 1990's. The newcomers are more advanced and they can even in real time view the engine data as the truck rolls down the road.

As far as the braking you are talking about I think the main reason they limit it (I'm assuming you mean engine braking where they use the engine to help slow the truck) is because it's loud as heck. It's a matter of noise and not shady cooking the books that make it the reason it's illegal.